


New Memories

by EntameWitchLulu



Series: Femslash February 2021 [17]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-26 15:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30107940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntameWitchLulu/pseuds/EntameWitchLulu
Summary: Sayaka didn't expect her Duel Disk to malfunction in the middle of a duel, and she definitely didn't expect to be rescued by Ruri's lookalike.
Relationships: Sasayama Sayaka/Serena
Series: Femslash February 2021 [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139543
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	New Memories

In hindsight, Sayaka should have realized that something was wrong. Her Duel Disk screen had fuzzed a bit strangely when it had turned on, and there’d be a weird static shock against her fingers when she set a few trap cards. But she hadn’t thought much of it — her Disk was a bit on the old side, after all, and she hadn’t replaced it since she’d used it throughout the invasion. It had taken a bit of a beating, but it was still perfectly usable.

Perfectly usable right up until the moment the overwhelming processing power of the Action Field caused it to spark wildly, shocking against her wrist, and Fairy Cheer Girl fizzled briefly out of sight just in time to drop Sayaka twenty feet off the ground.

Fairy Cheer Girl cried out as she fizzled back, darting after Sayaka, but there was no way she was going to be able to get there in time. The wind rushed past Sayaka’s ears, carrying Allen’s cry of dismay at her fall and Dennis’s swear as he tried to swing Trapeze Magician back around from the other side of the field to try and snatch her. Her mind, though, went blank — as though she couldn’t quite believe this was happening. Was she about to die?

“Lunalight Cat Dancer!”

There was a flash of silvery light, a flicker of something fast moving beneath her, and then all at once her whole body shuddered as her fall halted all at once — not against the hard ground, as she’d assumed, but into something very soft, cradling her gently. Her heart beat against the inside of her head and she could hardly breathe. It took her a few moments for her vision to clear enough to sort of see what had caught her — sort of because her glasses had gotten jostled, though thankfully, hadn’t fallen. She shakily lifted one hand to right them, and looked up into a pale pink face half covered by a crescent shaped mask. The cat woman smiled at her as she alighted gently on the ground.

“Sayaka! Are you okay?”

Allen rushed over as the cat monster set Sayaka down. Thankfully, her legs held, despite shaking. Allen grabbed her under the arm to support her anyway.

“What happened?? Are you all right? Are you in shock?”

“Allen, let her breathe,” Dennis said, swooping down to the ground and leaping from Trapeze Magician’s trapeze. He was white faced, though, making his freckles stand out. “You should sit down, Sayaka-chan.”

“Um, I guess so,” Sayaka said, letting Allen lower her to a nearby low stone wall. She was still only barely processing what had just happened — it had all been so fast. She looked up at the cat woman again. “Whose...whose monster is that?”

She didn’t recognize it. Dennis, however, turned with recognition.

For a moment, Sayaka thought it was Ruri — but that didn’t make sense, because Ruri had gone to Standard with her brother today. Then she saw the hard glint in the girl’s emerald eyes, and the scowl on her lips very unlike any expression Ruri made, and she knew it had to be one of the others — the girls with Ruri’s face, that Sayaka had yet to meet all of.

“Thank you, Selena,” Dennis started. “I don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t —”

“What the heck was that?” the girl demanded — Selena, Dennis had called her. “Are you all stupid?”

She rounded her glare on Sayaka, and Sayaka tensed. Allen glowered and stepped in front of her, but Selena ignored him.

“Selena, it was an accident,” Dennis said, holding up his hands.

“Accidents don’t happen when you do things right!” Selena snapped. “That was a disk malfunction!”

She jabbed a finger at Sayaka.

“When’s the last time you did a maintenance check on your disk?”

Sayaka flushed, ducking her head.

“I...I’m sorry, I don’t remember,” she said.

“Selena, please, don’t berate her,” Dennis said, grimacing. “Let the poor girl have a minute to breathe.”

“And you!” Selena said, swinging her finger into Dennis’s face next. He immediately raised both hands as though in surrender. “You should know better! You’re supposed to be a teacher now! You should always make sure your students do a proper check of their equipment before you teach them to do death defying stunts! Negligence!”

Dennis grimaced, but he nodded, chagrined.

“It...it wasn’t Dennis’s fault,” Sayaka said. “I really should have...”

She stopped talking when Selena shot her a glower. Sayaka’s cheeks grew even hotter. 

Selena huffed, angry. She lifted her disk and turned it off, her Lunalight Cat Dancer disappearing.

“Let me see your disk,” she said, beckoning.

“I’ll take care of it,” Allen said.

“Clearly you won’t! Let me see it.”

She glared at Allen, and then turned her eyes back to Sayaka. She had such intense eyes — they were Ruri’s eyes, and yet, they weren’t. Ruri would never have turned her gaze on someone with such intensity and irritation, and it was surreal seeing a girl who looked so like her looking that way. Sayaka felt like she didn’t have any room to argue. She turned off her disk, letting the very guilty looking Fairy Cheer Girl fade away with a silent thought towards her:  _ that wasn’t your fault, don’t worry. _ She unsnapped the disk and handed it to Selena.

Selena turned it over. She popped off the bottom panel and looked at it.

Sayaka already knew what had happened. The Action Field spell had been too powerful for her old disk and it had probably burnt out the part of the projector that indicated mass. She needed a whole new one. Selena seemed to recognize that too.

“You have a place you can get these replaced?” Selena asked.

“Um, at school,” Sayaka said. “But I can do that...”

“I’m not going to feel satisfied no one’s going to die here unless I actually see it happen,” Selena said. “Let’s go.”

She tucked the disk under her arm and started to march away. For a moment, Sayaka could only stare at her, surprised. Did she even know where the school was? Then she shook her head, and scrambled to her feet. Allen made a noise of protest, but Sayaka wasn’t really thinking, even now. She just knew Selena was walking off with her Duel Disk, and she followed automatically.

She wasn’t sure if Allen or Dennis tried to follow, but one way or another, she found herself walking alone down the street with Selena. Selena looked resolutely ahead, not even glancing back to see if Sayaka had followed. After a few silent moments, Sayaka realized that they were headed  _ exactly _ back to her school. But how did Selena...?

“Do you...know where you’re going?” Sayaka asked.

Selena blinked. Some reverie seemed to slip away from her, and she suddenly stopped, staring forward down the sidewalk. A few people bustled past her — it had been almost a year since Heartland was rebuilt, and the streets were finally starting to regain the liveliness they’d had before the invasion. This part of town was dotted with shops of all kinds, and people were all about, running errands and enjoying the warm weather.

“I...did,” Selena said, sounding surprised. “But now I forgot.”

She frowned, and then scowled.

“But how would you know where my school is? Have you been before?” Sayaka asked.

“No,” Selena said. “But Ruri has.”

She scowled again, glowering at nothing. Sayaka’s lips parted. Oh, she thought. Even after they had separated, was there still some parts of them that remembered each other’s lives? How strange. She wondered what that would feel like, to have memories floating through your mind that weren’t your own.

“But you distracted me, so I forgot where I’m going,” Selena said. “So you have to show me the way.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sayaka said, blushing. “I really didn’t know.”

“And I didn’t ask for you to apologize,” Selena said. “I just want you to fix your stupid disk so that I don’t have to rescue any more people today.”

She looked pointedly at Sayaka, and finally Sayaka got the hint and quickly started walking. She led the way down the sidewalk, Selena keeping pace with her just a step behind. Sayaka couldn’t help but glance at her out of the corner of her eye as she walked. She really  _ did _ look like Ruri, though her hair was lighter in shade, and her eyes deep green rather than magenta. How curious, that they could have such different palettes and yet look so eerily similar.

Selena’s eyes flickered almost absently, darting from building to building. Every now and then her gaze lingered, on a window display, on a tree, on a cat sitting in the window of a shop, on someone walking out of a hair salon.

“Have you...been to Heartland before now?”

Sayaka wasn’t sure why she’d asked. She didn’t know Selena at all. She only know that she looked like Ruri, and Ruri had spoken somewhat fondly of her. But even after all this time, she’d never actually met her.

Selena’s lips tightened into a thin line.

“No,” she said, after a long moment. “This is...the first time.”

Her eyes caught on a shiny window display of sequined dresses, and an utterly confused expression briefly passed over her face. Sayaka tried not to smile at it.

“Are you enjoying it?” she asked.

Selena slowed. Sayaka did, too, until the two of them suddenly stopped, standing in the sidewalk. Selena tilted her head back, staring blankly up at the sky.

“I...guess?” she said, after an even longer moment.

Sayaka tilted her head.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked.

Selena grimaced. She groaned, running a hand through her bangs and mussing the end of her ponytail.

“I don’t know,” she said, sounding frustrated. “I guess I was...”

She frowned and shook her head. Her gaze focused on Sayaka.

“You  _ are _ Sayaka, right? Sasayama Sayaka?”

Sayaka blinked, surprised that Selena knew her.

“That’s me,” she said. “But we haven’t...”

“No,” said Selena. “But Ruri has.”

They fell silent for a moment, people bustling around them like a river around stones. There was an odd expression in Selena’s eyes, now, one that Sayaka couldn’t interpret. But she thought, maybe, that it was...sad.

“Selena-san, are you...all right?” she asked.

Selena tightened her jaw.

“I don’t  _ know _ ,” she said. “This is why I was...why I didn’t want to come here.”

She tugged on her bangs, looking anywhere  _ but _ at Sayaka.

“Look, I’m — sorry,” she said after a beat. “Sorry for getting mad at you back there. The thing is, I...I still remember a lot, you know. For a second, I forgot I didn’t actually know you, and seeing you fall like that, it...it scared me. I freaked out. I get mad when I freak out. Yuzu tells me I have to learn how to cool it.”

She glowered, but there wasn’t much fire behind it this time. Sayaka felt her cheeks get pink again. So Selena had been upset because...because she’d been worried about Sayaka?

“Ruri cares about you a lot, you know,” Selena said.

“I...I guess so,” Sayaka said, though her cheeks grew even warmer at that. She ducked her head away, hoping Selena wouldn’t see, or worse, guess at why she was blushing. It was too hard to look at her, then, a girl who looked like Ruri telling her about Ruri’s feelings.

“So I guess...even though we’ve never met, I care about you too,” Selena said. “God, that sounds creepy. But anyway. Sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off on you like that.”

Sayaka chanced a peek at Selena. Selena looked away from her now, rubbing her nose with one finger. Her...her cheeks were pink, too.

Maybe Selena and Ruri weren’t so different after all, Sayaka thought.

“Well...I’m glad, at least, that you were there,” Sayaka said. “And...you’re right. I should have done maintenance on my disk. I’m usually better about it.”

She held out her hand, and blinking, Selena handed her disk over.

“It’s my fault, really,” she said, popping open the back and inspecting the damage herself. “I thought I could hardwire the Action Field technology directly into a Heartland disk, but I forgot about all of the Academia tech I’d already cobbled together in it, and they didn’t mix well.”

Selena stared at her when Sayaka lifted her head, and Sayaka blushed.

“Um...what?” she said.

“ _ You _ rebuilt your disk?” Selena said. “I thought it was just weird because it was a Heartland disk, but you did all of that?”

“You could tell it was modded?” Sayaka asked.

Selena shoved a hand through her hair, raising her eyebrows.

“I had to learn how to maintain my own disk at Academia in case of field emergencies,” she said, though she said it with a slight bitter taste. “Where did you learn?”

“I’ve always been a little bit into tech stuff,” Sayaka admitted. She decided now wasn’t the time or place to discuss how the invasion had caused her to double down on it, and how she and Allen had worked together to recreate the teleportation technology of the Academia disks, which was how Shun had gotten to Standard. Selena didn’t seem like she wanted to hear about that, and Sayaka didn’t want to talk about it.

“The point is, I mean, that I should have known better, and you were right to call me out,” Sayaka said. “And...thank you. For saving me earlier.”

She was surprised to see Selena smiling, a sort of triumphant smile. She thought, for a moment, that Selena was just glad about being told she was right.

“I didn’t know that you were a tech person,” she said. “I didn’t get that from Ruri’s memories. I learned something different!”

She looked so pleased, so excited, that for a second, it took Sayaka’s breath away. When she wasn’t glowering, Selena was...really pretty, actually. Of course she was, she had Ruri’s face but...but that excited look was still an expression Sayaka had never seen quite the same way on Ruri’s face. It was new, different.

“That...that makes you happy?” Sayaka said.

Selena seemed to realize Sayaka was there again, and flushed. She crossed her arms.

“Well,” she huffed. “I just...figured that I was going to deal with knowing random stuff all the time. It was nice to learn something the regular way, I guess.”

Now she looked embarrassed, and let her eyes flit away from Sayaka’s. Sayaka couldn’t help but smile. Selena was actually nice, wasn’t she? Just a little awkward.

“I really should get this disk replaced,” she said. “But...would you like to come with me, maybe? I could show you more of Heartland.”

Selena, for a moment, looked like she was going to shake her head. Then she bit her lip. She glanced at Sayaka again.

“Well...” she said. “Sure, I guess. I don’t have anything else to do.”

Sayaka smiled.

“Great!” she said. “Well then...welcome to Heartland, Selena-san. For the  _ first _ time.”

She put the emphasis on first, wondering if Selena would understand. She had Ruri’s memories, yes, but this was  _ Selena’s _ first visit. She didn’t have to chase the ghosts of memories that weren’t hers. She could make her own. And Sayaka could see her as someone other than Ruri — she could make her own memories with Selena.

She wasn’t sure if Selena understood. But something softer crept into her gaze, and when she smiled, it was sort of shy this time, awkward and uncertain — but still soft and kind.

Sayaka smiled back. Then she turned, and led Selena into the city.


End file.
